When special highway signs light up triggered by a wrong-way driver, folks quickly spring to action at several locations including at the Department of Transportation headquarters in Newington.
When special highway signs light up triggered by a wrong-way driver, folks quickly spring to action at several locations including at the Department of Transportation headquarters in Newington.
“This is in seconds, we're getting the alert,” said Aidan Neely, CTDOT highway operations planner.
Neely explained the technology being rolled out at highway ramps warns them and state police of a dangerous driver.
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DOT staff can watch what’s happening live and keep troopers up-to-date.
“We would go to our traffic cameras and continue to track that vehicle wherever it was going at that point to try to make that intercept, would help the intercept happen with the State Police,” Neely said.
Since the system started, there’ve been alerts for seven wrong-way drivers.
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And in every case, including one on Interstate 691 in Meriden, the driver stopped as LED lights went off and turned around.
“This is a perfect example of one that made that self-correction and realized they were about to put people's lives in danger as well as their own,” Neely said.
The push to get this project going came after 23 deaths because of wrong-way crashes in the state back in 2022.
“Those are head-on collisions, absolutely violent and horrific crashes that are happening,” Josh Morgan, CTDOT spokesperson, said.
The DOT identified 236 ramps considered high risk.
That could mean the on- and off-ramps are next to each other or there are bars and restaurants nearby.
With the data finding alcohol involved in virtually all wrong-way drivers, traffic engineering work can only do so much.
“Ultimately, we need that person to make that decision for themselves and make sure that they're paying attention and driving sober,” Morgan said.
The goal is to install the technology at more than 100 locations by the end of the year. The DOT is working with $60 million to get this going.
